Psychology.
What If Neurodivergence Is A Way To Economically Use The Brain?
The brain folds are there because we needed more surface area.
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Certain areas of the brain are smaller in volume and in white matter integrity in neurodivergent people, while others are larger and far more complex.
According to evolutionary psychology, neurodivergence is a set of genetic variants and not a “disorder.”
As we also know, neurodivergent people perform many tasks in a far more superior fashion than non-divergents.
So, here’s my hypothesis:
At some evolutionary period, I’m going to go with somewhere around the industrial age (I realize this is not that long ago, and unlikely with traditional thinking of biological evolution, but run with it, you’ll get my gist), the brain required changes in our fear, reward, and pattern responses that led to the subtle changes in brain structure and function, or patterns of neurodivergence.
As industries got bigger and “smarter”, people skills became less valued over focus or paying attention to detail, so many of our grandparents spent, at least, 8 hours a day not using particular parts of their brains.
You can see where I’m coming from with AI. As people lose the parts of the brain to the cyber age that puts pieces of information together to formulate a thought, new structures and functions begin to take their place.
As one door closes, another one opens. Or as I heard recently, if you miss one bus, there’s bound to be another just around the corner.
Symptoms of ADHD, even a full clinical diagnosis, can occur as a result of a TBI. Differential and secondary diagnoses result in massive discrepancies between individuals with neurodivergent qualities, no one person with a diagnosis looks clinically the same as another, whether or not there are comorbidities.
A whole host of psychiatric conditions can all look like neurodivergence on the outside; trauma responses, depression, anxiety, CPTSD, PTSD, borderline personality disorder and bipolar, or more so the other way around, but the neurological profile can look completely different.
Then there is how certain symptoms present. Someone having a bipolar manic episode can look quite similar to an ADHD impulsive high, and the forwardness of neurodivergent people can seem harsh, crude, or even narcissistic to people who are used to being somewhat more fake or “diplomatic,” if we must.
I’ve been called passive aggressive by people who don’t realize that I’m genuinely asking a question or making a statement. I now use that situation to watch out for people who are actually passive aggressive because I didn’t even know what that meant at the time and when I finally worked it out, I took it as a compliment that they thought my brain could go to that much trouble!
